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Austin Bag Ban: Building a Foundation for Tyranny

Austin Texas, whose claim to fame is its prolific “weirdness”, has undertaken a new effort to catapult their “weirdness” to new and unimaginable heights. While liberal mayors and governors across the nation have been busy waging war on guns, profit, and families, the liberal Austin City Council has been lamenting their unfortunate location within the red state of Texas, desperately searching for something to ban. Well, they finally found it, grocery bags. As of March 1st, grocery bags, both paper and plastic, are illegal inside the city limits of Austin. What’s equally disturbing is that the city is spending over two million dollars of taxpayer funds training groups of volunteer “citizen observers” to enforce the ordinance, with the hope of creating a bag gestapo. Retailers who do not comply with the ordnance risk paying steep fines.

This issue is easy to make light of, as liberal leaders across the nation are hell bent on banning anything and everything and their thirst for bans is unquenchable. From plastic bags, to guns, to carbon dioxide, to salt and soda- things must be banned! However, it’s really much deeper than that. Certainly we must mock and ridicule such ridiculous regulation, how could we not? But we must also realize that it is this sort of incremental localized regulation that has slowly but surely turned us into an administrative state. Outlandish local ordinances have a nasty habit of turning into widespread social engineering. The federal government uses silly plastic bag bans, such as this example to eventually make the case for federally funding green initiatives. Ludicrous local regulation is the foundation for incorrigible federal fiats. So while we mock Austin’s city council and sympathize with the single mother juggling milk and bread in one hand, and a newborn in the other, we can’t afford to lose sight of the big picture. The administrative state we currently live in is built upon a foundation of bag bans.

Please... so now getting rid of plastic bags is tantamount to akin to tyranny? Perhaps if some of you are confused as to why this so-called "movement" is quickly losing steam, its because of these non-stop ridiculous accusations, all in the same vein of " They're taking away.... OUR FREEDOMS!!" Well guess what? we liberals like freedom too. Secondly, we won the election for a reason and if some of you can't figure out why, then that's too bad.

Where does it say it? In the title where it says:"Austin Bag Ban: Building a Foundation for Tyranny"
You see? Most Americans see right through the overly transparent ploys of such statements. But to drive the point home more clearly, the GOP lost because they have fallen behind and only represent a shrinking part of the demographic. The country is changing and old fashioned McCarthy-era tactics will increasingly fail, even if they are sugar coated in a thinly veiled claim of "protecting our freedoms!!"
We don't need "Our rights" preserved. We've been winning back our rights from the very start and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Where does it suggest this is tyrannical? What it does suggest is how assinine it is, how it is driving bussiness out, how it grabs the authority to penalize bussiness owners for non-compliance, how it is adding millions of dollars in waste to create a bag police. This is laughable, that would be the point. You won an election, this is true and soon you will reap the ramifications to your decision to re-elect a tyrant and enemy to freedom, but thats okay, we are fighting to preserve your rights too.

Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced a new proposed rule designed to line the pockets of trial lawyers. The seemingly innocuous rule would effectively outlaw certain contractual provisions related to consumer financial products. But rather than protecting consumers, this proposed rule was about helping trial lawyers, a special interest that overwhelmingly supports Democrats like President Obama. Now, you have the opportunity to comment on this rule and tell the CFPB to stay out of your financial decisions.

Following the announcement of a bipartisan letter spearheaded by Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) and co-signed by 176-member of the House urging leadership to bring to the floor a joint resolution to end the USDA catfish inspection program, FreedomWorks Director of Government Relations Neil Siefring commented:

In August 2015, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in a departure from decades of precedent, unilaterally redefined what it means to be an employer. In the administrative decision, Browning-Ferris v NLRB, the unelected NLRB decreed that some employers were responsible for the employees of others. This action threatens to destroy the franchise model of business, harming job creation and putting 40,000 small businesses at risk. The difficulties for small business created by this decision are highlighted today in a Senate Small Business Committee hearing.

Did you know that there is an agency in Washington, DC able to wield the full power of the federal government, but whose director cannot be removed and is not answerable to the president, whose funding is not controlled by Congress, and whose decisions are difficult to challenge in court? Did you know that this agency is almost completely exempted from the Constitution’s check and balances? Did you know that this unaccountable power is vested in a single person? And did you know that this single person’s appointment was made illegally?

In 2010, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, a massive 2,300-page banking regulatory bill called the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The premise of Dodd-Frank was to prevent another financial crisis and, as the title suggests, reform regulation of Wall Street. Like many well-intentioned laws, however, Dodd-Frank in the hands of the regulatory state has turned into a crushing burden, highlighted today in a House Small Business Committee hearing titled “Bearing the Burden: Overregulation Impact on Small Banks and Rural Communities.” Rather than ending the situation where a few massive banking institutions were “too big to fail,” Dodd-Frank has actually entrenched the big banks at the top of the heap while crushing small community banks and credit unions.

Liberty Kitty has learned the hard way that overcriminalization and excessive regulation ruins lives and hurts the economy. She was prevented from grooming neighborhood kittens because she did not have the time or money it would take to become licensed, and she was incarcerated for 7 cat years under a mandatory minimum sentencing law for a non-violent crime.

In 1995, the Internet began, in earnest, as a commercial endeavor. Since that time, its growth has been explosive. Starting with only 16 million users that first year, the Internet now has over 3.4 billion users today—almost half the world’s population.

As the "drop dead date" for Obama administration regulations draws near, we are expecting a flood of "midnight regulations." Regulatory agencies, in an eleventh-hour attempt to pass new rules before the start of the next administration, will make a huge push in ushering in new proposals. In preparation for this regulatory outburst, we have provided a brief guide explaining how proposed rules become regulations.

The "drop dead date" for federal regulations is fast approaching and we are expecting more overreaching proposals. This is the last date that proposed rules can be finalized by the Obama administration, without fear that the next President will overturn them under the Congressional Review Act. Regulatory agencies are expected to release a flood of regulations before this date. This regulatory outburst, first noted in the final days of the Carter Administration, is known as "midnight regulations."

Just in time for Small Business Week, the SEC issued a 341-page concept release on disclosure requirements. Their generous gift of rambling, redundant Small Business Week reading material is accompanied with 340 pages of specific requests for comments. Unfortunately, the SEC forgot that every great novel needs a cover, so we provided them with the one pictured above.